President Donald Trump's immigration advisor confirmed on Sunday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents would be deployed to U.S. airports starting Monday. Their mission: to assist specialized agents in streamlining passenger security screening.

Donald Trump had threatened, as early as Saturday, to send ICE agents into terminals where waits can last several hours. This critical situation stems from a severe staff shortage at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), whose agents are no longer being paid due to a partial federal government shutdown.

Priority given to major airports

Interviewed on CNN Sunday morning, immigration advisor Tom Homan confirmed that an unspecified number of ICE agents would be operational starting tomorrow. Priority will be given to major airport hubs where lines sometimes reach three hours.

He specified that the details of this deployment were being worked out between the ICE and TSA leadership. "We will be at the airports tomorrow to help the TSA move these queues forward," he stated.

The goal is to assign simple surveillance tasks to immigration officers, such as guarding exit gates. This would allow TSA agents to focus exclusively on specialized screening stations. "I don't see an ICE officer supervising an X-ray scanner, because they aren't trained for that," Tom Homan clarified.

A "shutdown" with serious social consequences

Since February 14, funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees the TSA, has been frozen. This impasse stems from a deep disagreement in Congress between Democrats and Republicans over the practices of immigration enforcement, which are strongly opposed by the left wing of the party.

Due to this partial shutdown, thousands of federal employees have been furloughed. Others, whose functions are deemed essential, continue to work without pay.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned on ABC that the situation could worsen: more and more TSA agents might resign or take time off to look for paid employment in order to "pay their rent and food." Currently, the average absenteeism rate is 10%, but it reaches as high as 30%, or even 40% in some areas.